Pastor's Corner - "Come Out From The Tomb"

In the Cycle A readings for this 5
th Sunday of Lent, we are presented with the story of the Raising of Lazarus from the Dead, telling us that Christ is not just someone who is able to resist temptations during the First Sunday of Lent; Christ is not just that person who is presented as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets during the Second Sunday of Lent; Christ is not just your typical soothsayer who knows deep within what we ultimately thirst for like the Samaritan woman during the Third Sunday of Lent; Christ is not just the miracle worker who will open our eyes from the different levels of blindness that we experience in our lives just like the man born blind in the Fourth Sunday of Lent, but Christ is also the one who will take us out from tombs of every kind that we enter into and will raise us up just like he did with Lazarus, not because he is the most prolific magician or miracle worker, but because He is Life itself.

This story of the raising of Lazarus is the climax or the summit of the Lenten season before entering into Holy Week. It prepares and really wants us to realize that even though he will be facing the most horrible form of death at that time, we do not have to see it as a defeat, but truly a transformation of what death is all about because we have seen in the story of Lazarus that he has the power over death. The small details that the gospel gives us in the story are of utmost significance in understanding what truly
happened. We were told that Jesus arrived at Bethany four days after Lazarus had died. In the Jewish
tradition, after four days, there would no trace of a soul in the body. The body would have also started to decompose, meaning it is already lifeless, no longer a person, but only a cadaver. So for Jesus to resurrect Lazarus was way beyond what the people could explain and conceive. The raising of Lazarus, which John’s gospel places immediately before Jesus’ passion and death, made the Jerusalem authorities finally decide to put Christ to death. It is an irony like others the evangelist makes—Jesus, bringing life, is put to death and placed in a tomb. What does this gospel mean for us today?

Death in the spiritual language has many levels of meaning. One can already be dead even though the person is physically alive and well. One may have already placed himself or herself in the tomb of unforgiveness, in the tomb of unfaithfulness, in the tomb of any form of addictions, in the tomb of uncontrolled desires for material things and power, in the tomb of emotional abuse, etc. And whatever kind of tomb one has interred himself or herself, Christ can and wants to take us out from that so that we may experience new life. Just as Christ wept at the grave of Lazarus, he too weeps on the different graves that we have put ourselves. And, just like Lazarus, whom everybody thought that it was too late for him to be revived, at times we might say or others might say that there is no longer hope, that it is too late for us to begin anew. Well, this story of Lazarus should teach us that nothing is too late for God. But we have to be aware of the various tombs that we have placed ourselves already so that we know that we need to rise from those graves. What are the tombs that we willingly or unwillingly have placed ourselves? Christ commands us with the same words that he used to Lazarus: “Come out!” ~Fr. Cary